HR issues of telework

While the democratization of telework concerns different departments within companies, Human Resources is probably, together with the IT Department, the department whose activity has been the most impacted by telework, with new HR issues arising from this digitalization of interactions. From 100% online recruitment processes to the need to maintain social contact between all employees remotely, and to manage the work/life balance, Human Resources must, more than ever, prove their ingenuity and rely on digital tools to support these new uses.

Which are these issues?

The first HR issue related to telework is the user experience. In a teleworking situation, employees access their applications from home, sometimes from their personal PC. Beyond security aspects (access to business resources and applications from an uncontrolled network, and potentially from a workstation that is not controlled by the IT Department), this often means less ergonomics for employees, who find it more difficult to access their applications and resources, via a digital environment that is potentially different from the one they have when they are in the office. Nevertheless, there are solutions to guarantee the same work experience, whether employees work from home, from their personal workstations, or they work in the office, from their professional workstations.

The second issue is the right to disconnection. The frontier between private and professional life becomes blurred in a teleworking situation. It is thus more complicated for HR departments to guarantee this right. For example, an employee may feel obliged to answer e-mails received after working hours, which is a source of stress and discomfort. Once again, digital technology can help Human Resources with solutions that allow to define time slots during which employees can access their applications and limit this access during rest periods.

The third issue: the social link between employees and the integration of new recruits. While occasional or partial teleworking (for example, two days a week) is appreciated by a large majority of employees, continuous teleworking (whether institutionalized or mandatory, for example due to lockdown) is not suitable for everyone. Some employees may feel a lack of social ties or isolation, which is even more prevalent when it comes to new recruits. While nothing can replace direct social interaction, collaborative platforms can provide concrete solutions, and HR Departments have a tool for creating relationships and integrating newcomers, even during periods of continuous teleworking.

ZTNAZero Trust Network Access. The ZTNA is a name describing products that apply a "Zero Trust", or lesser privilege, policy in the area of external access. The objective is to... More: a technology designed to meet the HR issues of telework

In this context, ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access) seems to be the most appropriate technology for teleworking situations, not only for its security benefits, but also because it meets many of the HR issues of teleworking. The ZTNA solution from Systancia, which can be deployed as a software product (Systancia Gate) or as a cloud service (Systancia Workroom Session), offers, among other features, a highly operational response to the right to disconnection. It allows for example to plan in advance the time slots during which employees will be able to access their work environment and even to go much further: if teleworking schedules are set, or periods of partial activity / short-time working, the solution allows to guarantee these periods, both for the employee and for the company.

The ZTNA also allows employees to access strictly the same working environment as in the office, i.e. to work with the same performance and ergonomics as if they were in the office and therefore to carry out all their missions without constraints. Thanks to the security features specific to ZTNA (application of the principle of least privilege, compliance check of workstations, etc.), employees can easily access all their resources and business applications, even if they use their personal computers from home.